As Zimbabwe vote nears, state media drown out others

When Star-FM launched
on June 25, 2012, it was the first time in 30 years that Zimbabweans, who have
known no other radio besides the state-controlled Radio Zimbabwe, had the chance to call in to a radio station to
express their views.

"For the first time in my life I've heard statements on
radio attacking President Mugabe. I've never heard that before," media consultant Rashweat Mukundu said of the station.

On July 31, Zimbabweans will go to the polls in a "vastly
improved" media environment compared to previous years, Mukundu says.
"Journalists are free to travel to any part of Zimbabwe to cover a story and no
one is in police custody," he told me on the phone from Harare.

Still, the majority of Zimbabweans lack access to plural,
independent sources of news, and legal and physical threats to journalists impede
their ability to report freely. Independent and international media have
questioned the country's readiness to hold an organized election, but the majority
of citizens are dependent on strictly controlled state media to provide
information.

The licensing of talk radio Star-FM
suggests only a cautious and carefully controlled liberalization of the
airwaves. Star-FM is owned by the
Zimbabwe Newspapers Group (Zimpapers), a government company, and at
present can be heard only in Zimbabwe's two major cities, Harare and Bulawayo.
While it hosts hotly contested debates between the country's two major
political parties--Robert Mugabe's ZANU-PF and the Movement for Democratic
Change (MDC) led by Morgan Tsvanigrai --it reaches a minority of English-speaking,
urban dwellers. The state-run Radio
Zimbabwe broadcasts nationwide in both English and vernacular and is the primary
source of news for the vast majority of citizens. A box on the front page of
the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation website features "President R.G. Mugabe
quotes."

By far the most critical voices are stations located beyond
Zimbabwe's borders. SW Radio Africa
bills itself as the "independent voice of Zimbabwe," but is located in the
United Kingdom, while Studio
7 is a division of the Voice of America. Both stations broadcast on short wave
and depend on listeners having access to short-wave receivers, which are
expensive and not easily available. Efforts to distribute free solar-powered
short-wave radios were crushed
by Zimbabwean authorities earlier this year.

In the print arena, independent titles such as Newsday, the Financial Gazette and the Zimbabwe Independent provide more
even-handed coverage of the news, but they are written in English, sold mostly
in urban areas, and at a cover price of US$2 are too expensive for most
citizens. The government mouthpiece The Herald
is available countrywide for $1.

Mukundu says political parties still have low tolerance for
journalists, as evidenced by the language party leaders use when referring to the
media. "They're not used to being under scrutiny," Mukundu said of political
candidates. "If state media attend an [opposition] MDC rally and if independent
journalists attend a ZANU-PF rally--the hooligans from either side will chase
them away."

Assaults on journalists are still common:
CPJ documented four cases in June in which reporters were attacked apparently
in connection with their coverage of the country's two major political parties.

In response to threats against journalists, the Zimbabwean Union of Journalists' secretary-general,
Forster Dongozi, said
this year that the union would approach political parties to demand an end to
the intimidation of journalists by "media terrorists" who create a "climate of
fear" in which the media must operate.

Andy Moyse, project coordinator at the independent Media
Monitoring Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ), agrees that there is "significant
freedom" among some of the private media, but he told CPJ that a lack of reform means that journalists are still
subject to laws that threaten them with jail for undermining state security or
the military or insulting the president. "So if you report on corruption, you
could be deemed to be undermining the authority of the state," Moyse said.
"There is self-censorship--people don't investigate or comment as they should."

Critical for a
credible election in Zimbabwe is the registration of voters and the creation of
an accurate voters' roll--a process that has been dogged with problems. According
to media reports, some two million Zimbabweans under the age
of 30 are unregistered. The Research and Advocacy Unit, an independent non-government
organization, found that the voters' roll included a million people who are
either dead or have left the country, and in 78 constituencies out of 210 there
were more registered voters than adult residents.

The inability of
the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) to deliver ballot papers and voting
equipment in time to allow special voting for police and other eligible
officials on July 14 and 15 led the independent, nonprofit Election Resource Centre to call for the elections to be delayed to allow for adequate
logistical preparation. According to a South African Press Association and
Associated Press report, the current levels of disorganization make it impossible for the
country's voters to cast their ballots at 9,600 polling stations on election
day. In the words of an editorial in the independent South African Mail
& Guardian newspaper: "Given
that the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission was unable to organize a smooth vote
for just 80,000 over two days, how can it be expected to handle six
million voters in one day come July 31?"

Analysis of
preparations for the election has not found its way into Zimbabwe's dominant,
state-controlled media. On June 28, the MMPZ criticized the "sunshine journalism" of the
state-controlled media for its "superficial and uninformative coverage" of
mobile voter registration efforts. And according to its recent Election Watch report, the government-aligned media
ignores many of the human rights violations reported by private news outlets. But
there is no mechanism to compel powerful media institutions like the Zimbabwe Broadcasting
Corporation to give better coverage or equal coverage to all parties, Mukundu
says.

"Media is important for this process," he says. "They have a
role in providing technical information that you need to hear from government
and the Electoral Commission -- information about polling stations for example.
You can't get this from your friends. It's a challenge for citizens to get
information about the elections."

[Reporting from Cape
Town]

UPDATE: The designation of Rashweat Mukundu in the second paragraph has been modified.

Sue Valentine, CPJ's Africa program coordinator, has worked as a journalist in print and radio in South Africa since the late 1980s, including at The Star newspaper in Johannesburg and as the executive producer of a national daily current affairs radio show on the SABC, South Africa's public broadcaster.